emotions, were all false from the
first. The capacities of his mind were good as well as great--but they
had been restrained, while the passions had all been brought into
active, and at length ungovernable exercise. How was it possible that
reason, thus taught to be subordinate, could hold the strife long, when
passion--fierce passion--the passion of the querulous infant, and the
peevish boy, only to be bribed to its duty by the toy and the
sugarplum--is its uncompromising antagonist?

But let us visit him in his dungeon--the dungeon so lately the abode of
his originally destined, but now happily safe victim. What philosophy is
there to support _him_ in _his_ reverse--what consolation of faith, or
of reflection, the natural result of the due performance of human
duties? none! Every thought was self-reproachful. Every feeling was of
self-rebuke and mortification. Every dream was a haunting one of terror,
merged for ever in the deep midnight cry of a fateful voice which bade
him despair. "Curse God and die!"

In respect to his human fortunes, the voice was utterly without pity. He
had summed up for himself, as calmly as possible, all his chances of
escape. There was no hope left him. No sunlight, human or divine,
penetrated the crevices of his dungeon, as in the case of Ralph
Colleton, cheering him with promise, and lifting his soul with faith and
resignation. Strong and self-relying as was his mind by nature, he yet
lacked all that strength of soul which had sustained Ralph even when
there seemed no possible escape from the danger which threatened his
life. But Guy Rivers was not capable of receiving light or warmth from
the simple aspects of nature. His soul, indurated by crime, was as
insusceptible to the soothing influence of such aspects, as the cold
rocky cavern where he had harbored, was impenetrable to the noonday
blaze. The sun-glance through the barred lattice, suddenly stealing,
like a friendly messenger, with a sweet and mellow smile upon his lips,
was nailed as an angelic visiter, by the enthusiastic nature of the one,
without guile in his own heart. Rivers would have regarded such a
visiter as an intruder; the smile in his eyes would have been a sneer,
and he would have turned away from it in disgust. The mind of the strong
man is the medium through which the eyes see, and from which life takes
all its color. The heart is the prismatic conductor, through which the
affections show; and that which is seared,